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In a nondescript, six-storey Yaletown building, a skyscraper-sized lizard is laying waste to a city.

On dozens of computer screens in a darkened room, animators and artists are assembling images that will be blown up to silver-screen proportions in this spring’s blockbuster, Godzilla.

And the giant lizard flick is by no means the only 2014 movie that is relying on the hundreds of visual effects artists at post-production outfit MPC’s 38,000-square-foot facility. MPC is also working on The Amazing Spider-Man 2, not to mention Disney’s Sleeping Beauty re-up Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie.

Combined, the budgets of all three pictures come in at nearly $600 million ($160 million for Godzilla and $200-plus million for TASM2 and Maleficent). All three have release dates that are just months away: May 2 (TASM2), May 16 (Godzilla) and May 30 (Maleficent).

A lot of people have to work a lot of hours to get the right blend of fantasy and reality that will translate into box-office gold — or at least, fulfil a director’s vision. MPC’s Vancouver branch has grown from 50 to upwards of 400 people since opening in 2007.

“We were among the first to do visual effects here,” MPC Head of Film Michelle Grady said.

Grady was with Technicolor in Vancouver when the company decided to open a second MPC facility in Vancouver (the first was in London) to work on Zach Snyder’s superhero epic Watchmen.

“We showed Hollywood that special effects could be done in Vancouver,” Grady said.

Hollywood noticed.

Now you’d be hard-pressed to name a visual effects extravaganza from the last five years that didn’t, at some point, pass through Vancouver on its way to the big screen.

Elysium, Ender’s Game, Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, District 9, The Lone Ranger, Tron: Legacy — all have been completed or worked on to some extent by one of the many VFX studios in town.

International companies like Digital Domain 3.0, Prime Focus, Industrial Light & Magic, and Sony have been lured here by a number of factors. (Pixar set up shop in 2010, but shut down the 20,000-square-foot Gastown facility in the fall of 2013.)

Primarily, there is B.C.’s Digital Animation or Visual Effects (DAVE) tax incentive. But there is also the city’s lifestyle and a healthy, growing VFX culture and infrastructure (a VFX and 3D conference, SPARK [FWD], takes place Feb. 5-9 at Vancity Theatre, and includes a job fair).

To a certain extent, visual effects have taken the place of video games in Vancouver’s multimedia landscape.

“There was a time when Vancouver was the largest video game producer in the world,” Scott Thompson said.

The owner of Think-tank Training Centre, a North Vancouver visual effects school, Thompson notes that many of those video game companies, attracted by larger tax incentives, have moved out east.

“Now, it’s fair to say we’re the largest effects hub in the world. I was talking to someone in Los Angeles and she said it’s a ghost town. Just about every company is here.”

According to a 2013 Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development report, “British Columbia has more than 600 digital media companies, generating $2.3 billion in annual sales and employing about 16,000 people.”

The city is also home to many homegrown studios, from small post-production facilities and computer animation houses like Rainmaker to bigger players like Gener8 Digital Media Corp. and Image Engine. Gener8 oversaw the 3D conversion of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, while Image Engine has worked with director Neil Blomkamp on his sci-fi epics District 9 and last year’s Elysium.

And it’s not just big-budget, effects-heavy spectacles getting the CGI treatment.

Digital Domain’s senior visual effects supervisor Eric Barba estimates that 90 per cent of wide-release movies are CGI-enhanced, while MPC’s Grady puts the percentage at closer to 95. Even a flick like Rock of Ages, a musical, has been tricked out with visual effects, in this case turning Miami into Hollywood. (Don’t worry, Tom Cruise’s pet baboon in the movie was real.)

“I did a film for David Fincher, Zodiac, and people didn’t know we did any work on it,” Barba said. “Then, when you see the making-of for that film you realize, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know how much they did.’”

The work required on some movies is so enormous that it often involves not just multiple studios within the same company (MPC’s Vancouver, Bangalore and London studios worked on Man of Steel), but multiple companies (Sony’s Imageworks is also working on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 with MPC).

Because of the size of the projects, because of the deadlines, and because studios often need last-minute changes, VFX studios have to be a certain size, noted Grady.

“If the studio throws us a curveball, then we have to be ready to move,” she said.

Many of the MPC’s front line workers, like the computer animation artists, modelers, riggers, and texture artists, are from the Lower Mainland. The tax incentives for the digital effects industry are based on salaries.

“If they can hire a Canadian, or someone with landed status, they can get a tax credit on that salary,” noted Thompson.

Melanie Lowe, who has worked in the matte-painting and technical animation departments at MPC, graduated from Think-tank in 2012. Almost immediately she was hired by MPC to work on Man of Steel. Since then she has worked on Fast and Furious 6, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, and Elysium.

With so many people working on effects movies, not everyone gets a credit. But Lowe received one for her first picture, Man of Steel.

“I think I got a credit because I worked on it for quite a while,” she said. “It was really exciting to get a credit. It was such a big movie. I didn’t get credit for a couple of other movies, but I think it depends on how long you work on them.”

It’s not a particularly glamorous or high-profile job. Effects artists aren’t out in the street blocking traffic and filming Tom Cruise or Jennifer Lawrence, they’re spending hours in front of a computer screen.

Last year, MPC won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for The Life of Pi. “But by then the work is already over a year old.”

Butler has worked on dozens of movies, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy, two Harry Potter movies, and more recently Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. He recalls working on his first CGI film as computer graphics technical assistant, in 1993. The movie was Forrest Gump.

“I didn’t know what it was until I saw it,” he said. “In those early days, we were just a piece of post-production, like sound effects.”

Now, visual effects companies are often on board from the beginning (or, in the case of Digital Domain, even earlier — the studio co-produced last year’s Ender’s Game). But information is usually doled out on a need-to-know basis.

“With the secrecy and security, you only see the sequences you’re working on,” MPC Animation Supervisor Daryl Sawchuk said. “But you get to see stuff fresh. And if we’re involved early on you sometimes have access to the whole movie.”

The motion picture studios tightly control any information about the films while in progress, to avoid spoilers.

Lowe isn’t allowed to talk about her current projects, but that’s fine with her.

“I already have work that’s been released, and I can talk about that,” she said. “And I can talk about current work in the studio with other people. You’re talking about it all day anyway.”

Still, it’s gratifying when work in-progress gets noticed. The release of the Godzilla trailer in December generated buzz that made its way into the MPC studios.

“That buzz is used to get the film done,” Grady said.

And at crunch-time, when deadlines for highly anticipated movies like Man of Steel loom and the hours get long, Grady says she tells the artists to think of their 14-year-old selves.

Fast and Furious 7 — One of actor Paul Walker’s last films and the latest in the fast-car franchise. Release date: April 2015.

X-Men: Days of Future Past — The latest in the Marvel Comics mutant saga. Release date: May 23, 2014.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For — Another comic book movie sequel, this one based on another Sin City graphic novel by Frank Miller. Release date: Aug. 22, 2014.

Noah — You think you know the story of Noah? Director Darren Aronofsky has other ideas. Release date: March 28, 2014.

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